In her feature debut, Tanzanian-American filmmaker Ekwa Msangi delivers a penetrating story about an immigrant family from Angola struggling to understand each other after a long absence. The film opens up at the airport arrival gate in New York City where the father, Walter, who has already been in America for the past 17 years, awaits anxiously with flowers in hand. He can barely contain his excitement as he crosses over the guardrails to reunite with and embrace his wife, Esther, and teenage daughter, Sylvia. He takes them to his unimpressive one-bedroom flat and makes them dinner. From there, small and awkward ticks of tension emerge and prepare us for the many emotional battles the family are about to face.

The film is divvied up into chapters, each focusing on the individual perspectives of Walter, Esther, and Sylvia, starting when they reunite at the airport. Oftentimes, this type of storytelling can come off as redundant and predictable. But Msangi’s script is incredibly smart; the handing of the narrative baton—from Walter to Esther to Sylvia—feels surprisingly organic, like we are riding along with the family as they discover more about each other. By the end, you almost want the story to continue just to see how this dynamic evolves, considering everyone’s disparate, and not-so-disparate, personalities.

There is, of course, Walter, who, having worked on his own for so long, yearns to be a family man while still hoping to remain friends with the woman who used to live with him; Esther, a conservative traditionalist whose religious devotion often clashes with her more liberal-minded husband and daughter; and Sylvia, who tries to find her place at school by joining a dance competition while maintaining her responsibilities to her family.

What makes the film work so well, other than the meticulous direction and well-written script, are the equally compelling performances from all three actors. Walter is played by Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine, whose soft, gentle cadence and piercing stare envelopes every scene with an underlying sadness that signals a haunted past. Zainab Jah plays Esther with the heartwarming and desperate eye of a mother on the brink of believing she has lost her way with her Christian faith. And newcomer Jayme Lawson, as Sylvia, never slips into the angsty, misunderstood teen stereotype. She captures her character’s vulnerabilities with natural grace.

As a character study, Farewell Amor provides plenty to examine about what holds a family together. It is also a microscopic look into the subtle beauties that lie in between the many emotional conundrums inherent in the immigrant experience. Msangi’s quiet, “little moments”–style of a narrative resembles that of Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi. She has crafted a simple and nuanced tale of what it takes to really commit to those whom you love.